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Follow them, and you might be reading more books in a month and year than ever before. To answer that ever-pressing question, we spoke to authors, bookstagrammers and TODAY’s Book Lover in Chief, Jenna Bush Hager herself, for tips. Before she was 19, Shelby Zang didn’t consider herself a reader. First, with fiction, there’s a lot of nuance in the story that can be lost if you skim it.
- He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits.
- You almost always have your phone with you, and will thus almost always have a library at your fingertips.
- For Jenna, her phone and its endless pinging are among her top obstacles to reading.
- Here are eight strategies that can help you read more this year.
- For e-reader devotees, you can try Kindle Unlimited, which has a free trial and charges you $11.99 a month for access to 4m titles, including audiobooks.
- "I have a room where there’s no technology allowed. It’s a new room. I just take books there, put my phone away and read," she says.
Start small
I also don’t speed read fiction. For example, Alistair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is super hard to understand when you’re reading it at a snail’s pace; it’d be impossible to comprehend if you sped through it. They make extensive use of headings, bolded first sentences, and bulleted lists. For that reason, I don’t like speed reading. While it is possible, with lots of practice, to increase reading speed while maintaining decent comprehension, there’s inevitably going to be some comprehension loss the faster you go. As mentioned above, when people ask me how I read so many books, they often assume I’m speed reading.
Set a daily goal
This may take the form of an in-person book club, an online community like Zang’s, the bookish corners of TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms or a simple running conversation with the readers in your life. If you find yourself stalling, though, with all the choices, start keeping a running list of books to read based on recommendations from booksellers; people you trust; publications and more. “I love that moment, when I finish a book and findmsinteractive.info realize it’s time to choose the next one. After the first week, move up to ten minutes a day.
Reader Videos
To me, it feels like going to going figuring out what kind of food you want to eat for dinner. For author Emma Straub, the question of what to read next is one of reading’s great joys. Booktoker Zang calls the beginning of the book the "beginning borings." She challenges herself to make it through until she feels invested — or she doesn’t. But it’s worth finding the niches that get you excited, at least to get into the habit. "A lot of people who don’t read or want to read see reading as something that needs to be intellectually stimulating — and it doesn’t," Zang says. Think about the parts of your routine that are now automatic.
Combine your habits
Any other suggestions for how to read more? Years ago, I wrote a post about how to read more books and I still stand by all my recommendations in that post! "This article really helped. The pictures made it easy to understand and it was explained easily." English teacher Tristen Bonacci, MEd, says to “read every single day” to build the habit, even if you’re only reading a little bit. Or maybe you want to get into reading but don’t know where to begin.
Libby is an online book database that connects to your local library’s catalogue, allowing you to download books directly to your smartphone or e-reader. If you’re an avid audiobook listener, Audible also offers a monthly subscription. I love the feel of a crisp new hardcover, but I don’t love dropping the $30 at traditional retailers. One of my favorite corners of Instagram is #Bookstagram, where readers post aesthetically pleasing photos of their favorite books.
Or, if books feel like too much, you can turn to short-story collections or long-form journalism. And when you do, think of it less like a to-do list and more like a treasure trove. Consider signing up for newsletters with book recommendations and glancing at book lists that interest you to keep that list growing. Reading will come far more naturally if you focus on what you enjoy and close the cover on what you don’t. And if you pick a book you don’t enjoy, try not to be hard on yourself.
"Set a reading timer for five minutes per day. Read anything, but it has to be on paper," she says. On her online book group, Zang, 23, sees many other readers go through a similar transition. If you’re speed reading Dickens or Austen (yes, there’s a place for Jane Austen in a man’s library), you’re going to miss out on prose that should be relished.